


Animae Dimidium Meae

by Decepticonsensual



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 03:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12645198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decepticonsensual/pseuds/Decepticonsensual
Summary: Starscream is born the heir to the ruthless ruler of Vos - and some forces within the royal court would do anything to prevent the infant prince from ever ascending to the throne.  So where exactly do you hide a royal heir?  Well, how about in the home of an unassuming Praxian couple with their own unruly crop of sons?That's how Starscream ends up being raised as a brother to Prowl, Smokescreen, and Bluestreak.  And that's how he ends up in Iacon, at the dawn of the Decepticon movement, with a very different set of brothers at his side.  In this alternate world, are Starscream and Prowl still destined to lead armies on opposite sides of a war?  Or might there be another way?





	Animae Dimidium Meae

**Author's Note:**

> A discussion about how seeker sparklings and Praxian sparklings would probaby look alike got me thinking. So here, have a full-blown Starscream-and-the-Praxian-trio-as-brothers AU. It takes slight liberties with the timeline of the rebellion in IDW, and very great liberties with Cybertronian reproduction, “childhood”, and society, as well as mashing several continuities together without regard for life or limb. On a more serious note, there are also discussions of police brutality, which is probably not unexpected giving the setting, but deserves a warning nonetheless.

“Star!  Star, don’t go where I can’t follow you!”

 

The tiny jet paused in midair, little heel thrusters kicking, only long enough to blow a raspberry in his foster brother’s direction before zooming off across the street.  Prowl said a word he wasn’t supposed to know under his breath, and transformed, racing after Starscream.  Luckily, the seeker was still little more a blob of protometal with stubby wings he hadn’t quite worked out how to use.  Starscream was just bobbing along a few metres off the ground.  When screwing up his face ferociously and firing his thrusters as hard as he could did little to gain him more altitude, he tried flapping his wings.  This hoisted him a bit higher, but made him weave dangerously through the air.

 

Just as he was about to smack into the side of the Praxian Museum of Fundamental Design, Prowl changed shape again, stretched out a hand, and snagged his ankle.

 

“There!” Sighing, Prowl lugged the armful of squirming protoform back to the toy-strewn blanket where little Smokescreen was sitting, chewing on an oversized plastic shanix.  Prowl plopped Starscream down beside him.  “Now stay!”

 

Smokescreen patted Starscream and burbled happily.  Starscream looked up at Prowl with grave consideration.

 

Then he blew another raspberry.

 

 

***

 

Prowl’s parents had taken a serious risk when they’d agreed to secretly foster the as-yet-unborn Crown Prince of Vos.  The knives had been out for the child already in the corridors of the palace.  He belonged to a minor branch of the royal family; his mother had seized power some years before, in a coup as unexpected as it had been bloody.  By wiping out the ruling line root and branch, she had managed to protect herself for a time.  For while it seemed like every other aristocrat in Vos had immediately managed to dig up some tenuous claim to the throne through a mysterious cousin ten times removed, they’d all been too busy scheming against each other to pose a real threat.  That was going to change, however.  Nothing was more guaranteed to unite the warring factions than the prospect of an heir to secure the upstart queen’s succession.

 

And so the queen had sparked in secret, and had her offspring spirited away.

 

Praxus had been the best choice for immediate concealment.  The Datsun frametype was so prevalent there it was almost universal, and newborn Datsuns were indistinguishable from newborn seekers – just little beans with wing-shaped nubs sticking out of what would become shoulders.  All it had taken was a Praxian couple with a new protoform; a discreet envelope of cash to a doctor willing to swear that she’d delivered Prowl’s mother of a pair of twins; and a sad tale of the queen’s miscarriage to appease the Vosian court.  And it was done.

 

A few of the nobility had their suspicions, and a couple even went looking, but when no trace of the child could be found, they quickly lost interest.  Which was a relief to the worried foster parents, because as soon as their protoforms started to show distinct alt modes, concealment got a lot harder.  None of the neighbours ever came close to guessing Starscream’s real origins (how could they?), but the family had to grow used to the undisguised stares and the whispers, few of them kind.  Rumours about an affair with some dashing cad of a flyer were far, far better than uncomfortable questions about where Starscream had really come from, but that didn’t mean they never stung.

 

Once Starscream reached school age, a few of the other children took it into their heads to make the same insinuations to his face.  It was a short, sharp lesson for the Praxian children on why you shouldn’t bully someone with inbuilt weaponry – or with a watchful older brother. (Most of them came to on the ground after a blast from Starscream’s null ray, only to find Prowl standing over them, solemnly lecturing them about the school’s anti-bullying policies.)

 

 

***

 

Starscream and Smokescreen were raised as twins, and it took.  As children, different as they were, you could always see them sitting next to each other, blue helm pressed against black, scheming and giggling over how they were going to slip nanites into this teacher’s paint, or sneak into that grown-up party.  And there was Prowl, always following close behind.

 

“You’ll get caught,” he’d tell them, frowning in disapproval as he hefted baby Bluestreak into his arms to stop him fussing.  “No one is going to believe those disguises.  Here, better if you just use your real names, and say the bartender gave you a job collecting glasses. Keep it simple.  No one will care much once you’re inside the club, and you can get in through the service entrance, look.”  And he would start sketching diagrams in his notebook, and the twins would crowd around, because Prowl’s plans were always the best.

 

As the four grew up, though, things shifted.  Starscream started to demonstrate an ambition that Smokescreen lacked.  They still teased and fought and lay awake whispering secrets through the wall, but their days were no longer filled with each other.  Smokescreen had his own pack of friends now, usually to be found smoking around the back of the crystal gardens after dark.  They were constantly in and out of trouble, and Smokescreen almost seem to relish it – discarding all Prowl’s years of careful hints about how to avoid getting caught.

 

Starscream, meanwhile, stopped putting nanites in teachers’ paint (unless they  _really_ deserved it) and started pestering them for extra credit, instead.  Nowadays, he and Prowl were the ones with their heads always bent together over some scheme or other – not for pranks, but for advanced classes and science fairs.  And, when the time was finally right, for leaving Praxus altogether.

 

(“Thank  _fuck,_ ” Smokescreen all but prayed when they asked him along, and the shadows in Starscream’s optics lifted, as if he’d been worried that Smokescreen might not want to come.

 

“It’s not decided yet,” Prowl said, his fingertips fretting at the edges of his datapad.

 

Starscream put his hand on the datapad, stilling Prowl’s hand beneath it. “It’s decided.”

 

“It still seems so – extreme.”

 

“Don’t tell me you want to stay in Praxus your whole life, big brother,” Smokescreen laughed.

 

“It doesn’t matter if he does or not,” Starscream scoffed, but his optics on Prowl’s were keen.  “Because Iacon’s got the best mechaforensics academy in the world, and he knows it.”

 

And that was that.)

 

They left behind Prowl’s room with its spotless drafting table and neatly filed sketches and maps.  They left behind Smokescreen’s room, Smokescreen sweeping his last stash of illicit cygarettes and magazines from behind the picture frame into his rucksack on the way out.  They left behind Starscream’s room, the little tower extension their parents had built to try and make their two-storey house feel more welcoming to a seeker child out of his element.  They left behind Bluestreak on the front stoop, frantically waving goodbye.  They left.

 

Iacon was better than Starscream could have imagined.  While Prowl studied mechaforensics regulations (and occasionally bailed Smokescreen out of jail, until Smokescreen hooked up with a violet-opticked hustler from Nyon and the arrests seemed to stop; his brothers weren’t sure whether his new friend had straightened him out or trained him to be slicker, and Smokescreen was adept at dodging questions), Starscream enrolled in the Science Academy’s advanced programme, and made it his mission to meet  _everyone._ Arrogant though he certainly was, he’d never learned the aloofness of an heir to the Vosian throne. He would track down top scientists in their offices and bombard them with questions; he’d befriend the outcasts and the quiet students and the ones who were all awkward angles.  (And then he’d smirk at his academic rivals as they ran around the lab doing all of their own grunt work, while he had a small platoon of eager lab assistants who would scrub beakers and crunch numbers just for one of his smiles.)  Outside of the Academy, Starscream gained a reputation for being willing to talk – and drink – with anyone, from his brother’s cop pals to off-shift mine workers to a slumming Senator or two.

 

He’d been in Iacon three weeks when he first saw a couple of jets shove a trembling laser pointer into the gutter for daring to brush past them.  He’d been there two months when he one of his drinking buddies was taken out of the bar in handcuffs, and came back… different, with five neat little scars along the back of his neck.

 

Starscream talked with everyone, and listened to everyone, and read  _everything_ (including the datapads some of his miner friends pressed surreptitiously into his hand under the table), but he shared his real thoughts with only one mech.

 

“But none of it will touch  _you,_ ” Prowl said, as they sat on Starscream’s bunk in the Academy dorms late one night.  Prowl was already up for his early patrol in a few hours; Starscream hadn’t been to bed.  “Your alt opens quite a few doors, and your intellect opens most others.  No one raised any objection to you enrolling at the Academy.  And once you have your degree, I’m sure you’ll be granted formal alt mode exemption.”

 

“That is not the point.”  Starscream thunked his coffee mug down on the nightstand so hard that warm energon splashed everywhere, and then he was up, pacing, as Prowl sipped from his own mug and watched him. “The point is having to  _ask._   The point is the sheer temerity of this government in setting arbitrary limits on what we can achieve, and making us crawl and be  _grateful_ for the opportunities that should be ours for the taking.”

 

“So you’re not thinking about all the oppressed bulldozers and overhead projectors – you just don’t like having to ask  _permission._ ” One side of Prowl’s mouth quirked up.  “You had me worried for a moment there.  I thought you’d grown a sense of altruism.”

 

“Perish the thought.”  Starscream shuddered theatrically, but his smile was teasing.  “That’s your department.  Someone in this family has to look out for our interests.”

 

“Our?”

 

Starscream caught sight of his spilled coffee and pouted.  Then he flopped down next to Prowl, lifted his brother’s mug right out of his hands, and took a sip.  “You’re wasted in that little precinct, when you could be running whole worlds.”

 

Prowl stared at him for a long moment.

 

Then he said warmly, “Brat,” and aimed a kick at Starscream’s shins as he reclaimed his coffee.

 

 

***

 

Starscream had been in Iacon for more than a year when he was inducted into one of the Decepticon reading clubs.  And it was there that he first saw footage of the mech whose writing he’d been devouring:  a miner turned criminal turned gladiator, by the name of Megatron.

 

From that moment, Starscream knew exactly what he wanted.  He played the long game:  ingratiating himself slowly, Decepticon by wary Decepticon.  He volunteered for courier missions.  He stole science texts from the Academy library for the edification of manual workers who’d never had access to even the most rudimentary information that didn’t relate to their jobs, whether it was the layout of the cosmos or the basic workings of their own bodies.  He made himself indispensable, working his way closer to someone who knew someone who guarded the route to Megatron himself.

 

Prowl led underground workshops on the law, drilling rooms full of Decepticons on what you could and couldn’t be charged with if you were arrested during a protest.  He told himself it was a form of civic education, practically a duty – certainly not a betrayal. That excuse started wearing thin as the months went on, and he found himself passing out the comm frequencies of sympathetic public defenders, teaching classes in how to defend against his own enforcer-issue weaponry.  But by then, it was as much a necessity for him as for them.  There was a constant ache under Prowl’s plating, and every time he saw a bot led into the station in handcuffs for a doing a bit of partisan graffiti, the ache got sharper.  And every time a superior told him a few days in the cells might do this one good, so take your time with that paperwork, kid, it got sharper still.

 

The first time he caught a pair of armed fellow officers letting themselves into one of those cells late at night, the ache was so bad he thought he was going to shatter.

 

(Prowl still fell in love with his partner – because of course he did – and vice versa, though they fought viciously over Chromedome’s interest in mnemosurgery.  Prowl ended up sending Chromedome a stack of statistics on how shadowplay was used disproportionately on the lower castes to keep them in line, and even slipped him an illegal pamphlet on the subject by one Megatron of Tarn.)

 

Suffice to say, when Prowl and Chromedome and a cop named Orion Pax uncovered a vast Senate conspiracy and a counterfeit Matrix, Prowl was less surprised than he might have been.

 

Two weeks after the Matrix Heist, someone who knew someone slipped Starscream’s information to Soundwave.

 

 

***

 

They stood there, the two brothers, in a disused corridor under a makeshift gladiatorial arena, listening to the voices murmuring just beyond the door.  It was impossible to catch the words, but they could make out the staccato rasp of Soundwave’s voice, and the deep rumble that answered him.  Then a ping came through from Soundwave, simultaneously to them both.   _Come in._

 

 

Halfway to the door, Starscream paused, and looked back – bright red optics playing peek-a-boo around his shoulder vent.  “Sure you can follow me this far?”

 

Prowl’s smile was knife-thin, and just as quickly gone again.  “You’re a bit big for me to grab your ankle, now.”

 

Their gazes held, and Starscream gave a half-nod.  And opened the door.


End file.
